July unemployment report better than expected, 247,000 jobs lost, rate falls to 9.4.

Pace of Job Cuts Slow as Payrolls Fall Less than Forecast
Published: Friday, 7 Aug 2009 | 8:35 AM ET Text Size By: Reuters

U.S. employers cut 247,000 jobs in July, far less than expected and the least in any month since last August, according to a government report on Friday that provided the clearest evidence yet that the economy was turning around.

With fewer workers being laid off, the unemployment rate eased to 9.4 percent in July from 9.5 percent the prior month, the Labor Department said, the first time the jobless rate had fallen since April 2008.

The government revised job losses for May and June to show 43,000 fewer jobs lost than previously reported.

Analysts had expected non-farm payrolls to drop 320,000 in July and the unemployment rate to rise to 9.6 percent. The forecast was made earlier this week before other jobs data prompted some economists to lower their estimates for job losses.

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http://www.cnbc.com/id/32327811

Average workweek is a leading indicator in the employment report.

Manufacturing workweek is another and that was up .3 hours.

:-)

overall numbers are still awfully high.

early next year. The good news is that unemployment probably only has about a percent higher to go now instead of going up into the 12% range.

Glad of it.

...knowing the magnitude of the lies perpetrated by Bush/Cheney with unemployment statistics. Even if it's not really good news, though, it may at least mean that the free-fall of the economy is slowing.

I've become aware of more jobs opening lately, but I can't identify a clear trend.

.... sure, it may go back up again, but today's figures were inevitable. (See the chart I just posted below)

you, I tend to be a bit cynical. I don't think they are counting all the people who have currently run-out their unemployment benefits; nor the people working part-time that want full-time. Not to mention all the people furloughed and making a lot less money, especially in my state of CA.

However, the RE/stock markets seem to be rebounding. Many multiple offers in my area and lender's starting to lend, I'm just hoping we have hit bottom.

Wait...what?

.... and now we're down to only 247,000 .... the number of new claims has fallen (with one little exception) every month that the President has been in office.

The White House may not be doing a victory lap, but *I* am gonna skip around the house a bit this morning.

If the unemployment rate actually dropped, wouldn't that indicate that there were more jobs created than lost? However, that still wasn't the case since 247,000 more jobs were cut. I'm trying to reconcile the two stats.

..... unemployment wouldn't be at by 9.4 it would be at a negative number. (Confusing, isn't it?)

Instead, you have existing joblessness combined with new clams that equal 9.4% of unemployment across the country. The rate of NEW claims has slowed to a pace that it caused the total number to go down a bit.

Bottom line, 9.4% of all Americans are without a job, but the speed at which people are losing jobs is slowing down and, for the first time in months, the speed slowed enough to cause the total number of the unemployed to go down a bit.

All that 9.4% means is that 9.4% of the people who are actively seeking full-time employment currently cannot find it. So if 300,000 people stop looking for work, they're no longer included in that number. If someone is working part-time and they'd rather work full-time, they're not counted. If someone took a lower-paying job after losing a higher-paying one, they're not counted. Etc. etc.

What today's news means is that jobs are being shed more slowly, which was expected. Most of the very vulnerable jobs have already been shed. The pressure on the "core" economy is now what we must watch in the coming months. We're about to enter a stall with -1% to +1% economic growth and a relatively level unemployment number +/- a percentage or so.

It's what happens after this stall that makes or breaks us.

The job loss rate is good news because it was fewer jobs lost than expected. Expectation is what it's about.

...... when the MSM was swearing up and down that it would be 10%

Looking at the jobs shed and the numbers that left the workforce, we're running along what expectations have been. At least, what my expectations have been. I look at these numbers every day as part of my job, and so far the pattern is about where we figured (we being my colleagues).

The problem with these conversations is that the numbers are calculated dishonestly. If we added in the all of the job losses and all of the workers who exited the labor pool in the last month, that 9.4% would be much closer to 10. Since we don't count those, the official government number came down a tenth of a percent - even though the job situation worsened.

Does that make sense to you? That there were job losses, yet the unemployment figure went down?

It's very frustrating attempting an economic discussion when so much dialogue consists of "I read it on the internets" and "But this is what the government told me the number is."

Both sources stopped caring about the real economic numbers quite some time ago. The rest is politics. Well, I'm not interested in making politicians look good or bad. The people in my business need to know what they'll be dealing with down the road, so we try to look behind all the spin and get at the truth of the matter.

The truth is, we're stalling, that it was expected, and that the real make-or-break test of the administration's economic policies is yet to come.

went down. I don't understand your confusion about that.

And yes...most definitely....it was because expectations by the public and economic community were that job losses would at least be the same, or climb, like the previous months all year...it was because of that, that a slight decrease in the losses sent the stock market soaring.

It's all about expectations. If you own a stock, and you know the co. is in trouble...when the co. reports its fiscal year end profit or loss...you might be expecting a huge loss because the companies' problems. If the company posts only a modest loss, the company's stock price will soar, BECAUSE ALTHOUGH THE CO. HAD A BIG LOSS, IT WAS LESS THAN EXPECTED.

It's all about expectations.

Now maybe you, personally, expect job loss rate to improve. But most people did not, and most economists did not, and the administration did not. Everyone was hoping, but did not "expect" the job loss rate to improve.

The Labor Dept conducts two surveys each month: a survey of households, and survey of about 150,000 businesses and government agencies (the establishment survey). The unemployment rate reported is based on the household survey, and job losses reported are based on the establishment survey. So you can see how the results might be different depending on whether you're surveying households or businesses.

In the household survey, the number of people unemployed declined by 267,000. That accounts for the drop in the unemployment rate from 9.5% to 9.4%. Keep in mind though discouraged workers and involuntary part-time workers are not counted as unemployed. And it appears that at least part of the drop from 9.5% to 9.4% was the result of more discouraged workers not being counted as unemployed.

In the establishment survey, payrolls declined by 247,000 (reported as "job losses").

.... put there mere fact that the President is touting the numbers to the press twice in one week is a good thing. ;)

The MSM WANTS them to pimp those numbers to the fullest extent--were I Obama's PR team I'd let them speak for themselves and try to build on them.

So hopefully August will see some improvement too.

Read the fine print on the BS er.. BLS statistic and how they derived it. They assumed that the number of people actually seeking employment fell by 0.2%, among other rosy assumptions.

So if you simply added 0.2% to last months 9.5% you'd get an increase of 9.7%. Add a little here, seasonally adjust a little there, add in the birth death model, carry the 2, round down to nearest number, subtract Pi and....

VOILA!! Recovery started 3 months ago!